PLM Is More Than Software
David Prawel, President & Principal Consultant, Longview Advisors Inc.

Product Lifecycle Management, or PLM, is many things to many people. To some it is PDM (Product Data Management) on steroids, while others think of it as well-defined workflow and process, wrapped around a core of data management and collaboration software.

Semantics aside, the need for better communication and collaboration on a global scale is clear. Relentless competition is forcing manufacturers to react faster, work smarter, reduce cost, improve quality and compress process design and release cycles, all while developing brand new products at unprecedented rates. Products are consistently more complex as companies try to differentiate themselves. Product design cycles and time to market continue to compress, while regional advantages like quality and raw material cost drive the globalization of supply chains. At the same time, suppliers of key sub-systems are spread around the globe, as out-sourcing and off-shoring have become a staple in the manufacturing diet. These are the facts of life in manufacturing today. The need could never be clearer for tools that enable a company to drive efficiency and stimulate innovation.

Companies work tirelessly to increase the "customer" value of their products, accelerate time to market, increase efficiency and improve productivity of people and processes. Increasing customer value requires a keen understanding of the value chain to gain valuable insights into cost, quality and functionality, all of which help to reduce cost and enable zero defect product launches. Faster time to market means faster product cycle times; faster iterations of trial and error cycles and faster convergence to winning product designs. Higher efficiency and productivity means doing more with the tools available, while improving processes to minimize errors and make people and technology more effective.

But in this drive to innovate faster, design and engineering teams have become "islands of automation”, as they become more specialized in their respective crafts. Simulation, analysis, CMM, and many more downstream application areas acquire specialized tools and expertise to enhance their productivity, but often can’t communicate their product data or their intellect with colleagues, partners and suppliers. PLM has emerged as a solution to this challenge.

According to CIMdata (www.cimdata.com), "PLM is a strategic business approach for collaborative creation, management, dissemination, and use of product data across the extended enterprise from concept to end of life – integrating people, processes and information.” PLM helps companies derive greater benefit from their investments in IT and people. And the technology to enable PLM continues to expand as marketing people refine their product offerings (albeit sometimes in advance of their actual product!).

The basis of an effective PLM solution starts with of four fundamental technologies:

• Product Data Management
• CAD/CAE/CAM
• Collaborative Product Design
• Interoperability

In addition, many PLM solutions provide support for Product Configuration Management, Customer Needs Management and Direct Sourcing of Materials.

PDM systems provide fundamental product data management support. PDM systems have emerged in the recent decade to accommodate the need for a common repository for product data that enables the sharing of product-related information throughout the global enterprise. Many companies implemented PDM systems in recent years as the core of their PLM vision, often with great success. CAD/CAE/CAM and collaborative product design products comprise the core applications that enable product design and development. Interoperability solutions are also a mission-critical, but often forgotten, enabler of effective PLM. As global business partners collaborate and react to changes in product design and process, much of their success depends on fast, efficient sharing of high-quality product data. But problems often arise during data exchange, presenting a challenge to effective collaboration in design, analysis, simulation, manufacturing, and countless other applications. Interoperability solutions help solve these p roblems.

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The main benefits of PLM in product development are:

• Faster time to market, due primarily to better communication of mission-critical information between functional teams, and streamlining trial and error processes between product design iterations
• Lower product development cost, due to time savings and reduced rework and recreation of data
• Increased product quality
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Higher levels of design reuse
• Higher revenue, from more efficient processes, better design reuse and faster time to market

Successful PLM implementations require people, technology and processes. Information technology and engineering software tools can help automate functional activities in and across islands of automation, but effective PLM is more than technology. Andy Grove understood this when he recently said, “Strategic actions with profound consequences are not caused only by technology-based innovations. Some of the most profound come from process innovation”.

Successful PLM implementations require a careful attention to process and methodology. At the recent Management Briefing Seminars (MBS), sponsored by the Center for Automotive Research (www.cargroup.org), Mike Richardson, Director of Engineering for Delphi Steering, articulated this point most clearly when he said “An effective PLM or PDM vision across a global operation would simply not be possible without a top-down focus on methodologies and best practices.”

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“An effective PLM or PDM vision across a global operation would simply not be possible without a top-down focus on methodologies and best practices.”…Mike Richardson, Direct of Engineering, Delphi Steering

Many good methodologies are used in manufacturing today, and countless success stories have been told of the huge business benefits that result from implementing standardized methods and processes. For example, Six-Sigma has proven very beneficial for problem solving and quality management, and CM-II is a very popular method for configuration management. And there are many more. Mr. Richardson and his team at Delphi Steering developed a set of standardized design methodologies that have yielded substantial benefits in product and process design. In one product design discussed at the MBS conference, Delphi 's Horizontal Modeling™ and Digital Process Design™ methods (www.delphi.com/dti/dcce/hm_dpd) enabled a 75% reduction in product and process design time, and a concurrent increase from 20% to 84% in value-added work that took place in the design and engineering process. Mr. Richardson also said that his operation has been able to double the number of designers that can be supported by a CAD operator. These are all great, “real-world” measures of productivity.

Casting model (modeled with Horizontal Modeling™) courtesy of Delphi Steering

Standardized methodologies have enabled Delphi Steering and countless other forward-thinking manufacturers to cut costs while accelerating product cycle times and speeding products to market. Attention to method and process enables vastly improved communication and collaboration between designers and engineers worldwide, which yields higher productivity and higher levels of innovation. Standardized methodologies also help increase design reuse by enabling designers and engineers to better understand design intent and capture and share knowledge about their products and experience. Since staff can better understand each others' work, businesses benefit from great flexibility in staffing their programs. Higher value-add work means designers can spend more time designing and engineers can do more engineering. Job satisfaction, quality and productivity increase.

PLM is a business approach, comprised of both technology and process, which helps manufacturers derive maximum benefit from product data and IT investments throughout a product's life cycle. PLM helps drive innovation and profitability by focusing and leveraging corporate assets and product related information across the global enterprise and its value chains. Products designed with PLM cost less to produce, and have a longer, more productive lifespan. The major benefits that accrue to companies who implement PLM include: faster product development cycle; increased productivity at lower cost; higher quality; greater business flexibility in both the internal and extended enterprise, and faster time to market. PLM is making a positive difference for those leading companies who have implemented it.

About the Author

David Prawel is president and principal consultant at LongView Advisors Inc., a consulting company serving manufacturers and manufacturing software companies. He can be reached at dprawel@longviewadvisors.com.